What Time Is It On Mars?
by OceanTiger13
Summary: "They've just finished brunch, and the kid is getting down on one knee in the middle of a goddamn diner. 'I've got something for you,' Jim says, blue eyes bright and dancing as he reaches into his jacket pocket. Behind him, the waitress making rounds with the coffee pot gives a little squeak of excitement, and now everyone is staring." A NASA AU, from an earthly perspective. McKirk


What Time Is It On Mars?

 **A/N:** T for language (it's _Bones_ , people; I'm not gonna censor him) and references to certain adult funtimes.

Disclaimer: I have a job; it pays the bills. This is not it.

* * *

 _2:34 AM, Los Angeles, CA_

 **Jim** : Bones, hey

 **Jim** : i dont really know how to tell you this but I guess i should just come out and say it

 **Jim** : so

 **Jim** : the apartment complex may have burned down in your absence

 **Jim** : I'm ok

 **Jim** : i think most everyone else is

 **Jim** : Jon Archer's dog may not have made it

 **Jim** : i managed to save some of the stuff

 **Jim** : i wasn't able to get your laptop

 **Jim** : but i saved the fridge magnets

 **Jim** : couple of Jo's drawings

 **Jim** : the knife set

 **Jim** : that nice bourbon from your cousin

 **Jim** : i was in the kitchen at the time

Leonard McCoy has already spilled coffee down the front of his shirt and all over the steering wheel. Jim is still typing on the other end, but he doesn't bother to wait for the rest. Hands shaking, he tabs open Jim's contact and hits _call_. Half a second later he fumbles the phone trying to put down the coffee cup, spilling the rest of it onto the passenger's seat.

"Shit—"

Jim's voice rings out, tinny and small, from the floor of the car:

" _Bones?_ "

Pain explodes over Leonard's left temple as he bangs his head trying to pick up the phone. He snatches it, fitting it frantically to his ear.

"Jim?!"

" _Hey—"_ Jim's voice snaps from relief to concern in an instant. " _Are you driving?"_

"No, I'm in the parking lot—still at the hospital. Jim, where are you?"

" _I'm at home_. _I'm ok._ "

His earbuds with the hands-free speaker are coiled around the rearview mirror, somehow about ten times more tangled than he left them when he arrived at work that afternoon. He clamps the phone between his jaw and his shoulder as he tries to disentangle them.

"Outside?" he asks, grappling for information. "Are the paramedics there?"

For all he knows, "I'm ok" could mean "I've broken three out of four limbs and am being treated for shock."

If there's anything Leonard knows about Jim, it's that he downplays things. Not trivial things, like Quiz Night ( _But Bones, Quiz Night is_ anything _but_ trivial!) or things Leonard really doesn't need to know about, like the last girl he managed to talk into bed, but important things. Like accomplishments, even as he manages to pass himself off as an arrogant sonofabitch. Or personal safety. It's his MO.

The year they met, reluctant roommates in shitty UCSF student-overflow housing, he downplayed the stories about his asshole stepdad until the day the fucker wound up in state prison for assault and somebody from back home called to tell him about it. He downplayed just how goddamn intelligent he was, until one afternoon Leonard showed up at the dorm and found him reading one of Leonard's medical journals because he "wanted to be up on current research". (The resulting debate about had lasted four hours and a trip to In-and-Out.)

" _What day is it?_ " Jim asks.

 _Shit_. That can mean nothing good.

"I don't—just stay put, ok? I'm coming," Leonard says, abandoning hope with the earbuds and putting his phone on speaker, sticking it in the cup-holder that doesn't reek of burnt hospital coffee. He pulls forward out of the too-small parking space, narrowly avoiding scraping the paint off a pristine, blue Prius.

" _No—Bones. What_ day _is it?_ "

Jim makes a noise then—something that makes Leonard's stomach do a backflip, it sounds like such an open, unrestrained sob—

Until Leonard realizes he isn't sobbing.

Suspicion pooling in his gut, he brakes in the middle of the darkened lot and picks up his phone again, looking at the date.

"…Oh, you son of a bitch."

Jim's giggles turn into hysterics. Leonard holds the phone away from his ear. "I hope you've had time to confess your sins, kid."

Jim, practically hiccupping with mirth, manages to find his voice. " _Well, everything but this last one. Oh, and I may have opened the bourbon—_ "

Leonard hangs up the phone.

April Fool's Day _his ass_.

* * *

"Holy shit, what happened to you?"

Jim is sitting at the kitchen table, wearing nothing but a ratty bathrobe, boxers, and a pair of pink bunny slippers that were almost certainly a white elephant gift. There is, indeed, a glass of bourbon in his hand. Leonard shoots an appraising glance at the bottle, but most of it seems to be still there.

Jim leans forward, grinning. "Did you finally drink enough coffee to absorb it into your soul? Do your veins now run with caffeine? Are you one with the Joe?"

"You owe me a trip to the drycleaners, asshole," Leonard mutters, discarding shoes, keys, and backpack in the hall.

"Real romantic, Bones!"

Leonard shrugs out of his button-up and tosses it into the open laundry closet, then ducks into his bedroom. Reemerging in threadbare pajamas of his own—an Ole Miss tee-shirt and a pair of sleep pants well past their prime—the thought occurs to him that something isn't quite normal here. He shoots Jim a questioning look. "Why are you awake?"

"I need to talk to you about something."

Leonard leans against the wall, arms crossed, smirking. "Let me guess: you're finally breaking up with me."

"You should be so lucky. How is Nancy, by the way?"

"Fuck you," he laughs. "How's Carol?"

Jim winces. "All right, touché. No, it's about work." He holds up a second tumbler.

Leonard sits opposite him and pours himself two fingers. "You discovered Martians."

"No."

"You are a Martian."

"Well…"

Leonard pauses. "Explains a lot," he says evenly.

Jim is quiet for a moment. "Well…let's start with this: I got promoted."

Leonard blinks. "Really?"

"Yeah."

Jim's smiling now. It's a sharp contrast to the shit-eating smirk he wears when he's messing around or fake-flirting, or the feral shark-grin he reserves for assholes in bars with entitlement problems. Jim has a closet of masks, most of them cheerful, but Leonard can always tell when his smile is real.

"I get to work on the Enterprise Rover."

Leonard doesn't hide how impressed he is. His eyes widen a fraction; he sits up a little straighter.

The Enterprise Rover is NASA's latest Mars mission, modeled on Curiosity and Sojourner before it, and on Spirit and Opportunity before them. Jim's been gushing about it since its launch back in early December, now a scant five months away from the landing date. A position on the engineering team is every Cal Tech robotics PhD's wet dream, and it's been Jim's ambition since he became an overeager grad student in the first place—especially since he snagged himself a coveted internship at the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab.

The table suddenly feels too quiet, and Leonard feels a need to fill the silence: "So you're drinkin' cousin Ted's bourbon," he observes, dryly.

The shit-eating grin returns. "I felt a need to celebrate."

"Well, congratulations." Leonard raises his glass, and Jim mirrors him. "You deserve it."

The bourbon is smooth and warm going down his throat, and Leonard realizes it really is the good stuff. It's from a new, local distillery just outside of Savannah run by a friend of Cousin Ted's, who sent the bottle as a Christmas gift. In theory, Leonard's been saving it for a special occasion. In reality, Cousin Ted has always had somewhat questionable taste, but every once in awhile he gets lucky. It's nice to be proven wrong.

"Thanks," Jim says. "But there is more to it, and it kind of affects you."

"Ok." That's a cue for a longish explanation if he's ever heard one. Leonard gets comfortable, crossing an ankle over his knee, leaning back in his chair, waiting.

Jim puts his glass and his elbows on the table. "Have I ever talked to you about Mars Time?"

"Mars Time…" The concept's a little fuzzy. He's heard the phrase before, possibly during one of Jim's tipsy geek-out sessions, but hell if can remember the details. "You've probably mentioned it…"

"Ok, ok." Jim waves his hands as if to clear an invisible whiteboard. "So…you know how the Earth rotates."

Leonard shoots him a look. "Jim—"

Jim's eyes crinkle up at the edges and he raises his hands in protest. "Just checking!"

"I am aware of this little-known fact, yes."

"You know, I think the caffeine makes you more sarcastic, and the alcohol brings it out. Anyways, a solar day on Earth is 24 hours long."

"Mm-hmm," Leonard says around another sip of bourbon.

"Well, I'm gonna be working the Martian night shift. And a Mars solar day is 24 hours and forty minutes long."

"Ok…"

"Meaning my new schedule's gonna be a little…weird."

Jim falls silent, and Leonard slowly puts two and two together: "You're gonna start work forty minutes later every single day."

Jim nods. "Pretty much."

Leonard considers this, trying to wrap his brain around the concept. "…Indefinitely?"

" _God_ , no. Just three or four months. Then we switch off with another team."

Well, thank NASA for small mercies.

"That's good," Leonard says. "Thought your immune system couldn't get any more screwed up."

"Har har." Jim grins, picking up his bourbon again. "Seriously, it's gonna get weird."

"Jim, it's three a.m. and I just got off work. I think I can handle it."

* * *

 _July_

He can't. He really can't.

"What are you doing?" Leonard asks.

Jim doesn't say the obvious thing, because it's _obvious_.

It's a Sunday morning. They've just finished brunch, and the kid is getting down on one knee in the middle of a goddamn _diner_.

"I've got something for you," Jim says, blue eyes bright and dancing as he reaches into his jacket pocket.

Behind him, the waitress making rounds with the coffee pot gives a little squeak of excitement, and now _everyone_ is staring.

Leonard shrinks into his collar, feels his face growing hot. "Jim, we're kind of in _public_ —" he half-whispers, trying not to make eye-contact with the gaggle of gaping old ladies in the booth kitty-corner to theirs.

He's mostly used to this, because Jim is a master prankster, and because he's like this with everyone; it's his _style_. And even though Leonard doesn't get all that freaked out by the fake-flirting anymore—he's been to therapy, and for Chrissake it's LA, not Georgia—but it's also a fucking _diner_ on a Sunday morning, and the cute, nuclear-looking family at the corner table was definitely just at church, and—

Jim clears his throat, drawing Leonard's gaze, and Leonard sees he's holding a plain, black velvet box on the flat of his palm. The alarm bells in the back of his head die down a little bit.

"That's way too big to be a ring," he says.

"It's not," Jim replies, and opens it.

For a moment, no one says anything. The diner is completely silent. The little girl in her pale pink Church dress drops a hair clip, and it's audible even over the hum of the AC.

"It's a watch," Leonard says finally.

"Yeah!"

Leonard blinks at him. "But I already have a watch."

He does. It's one of the few things he inherited from his father, and it sits heavy on his wrist: old but expensive, and still keeping perfect time. He's had to change the strap once, and tracked down the original maker so he could replace it with the same dark leather. There's an inscription on the back: _Medici, cura te ipsum_. Normal. Unassuming.

By contrast, the one in the box is something of a monstrosity: silver-gray and metal and digital, connected by a metal clasp like a sci-fi bracelet.

"It's a Mars watch!" Jim proclaims. "It tells the time on Mars!"

"Uh—"

Jim clears his throat again. "Will you, Leonard Horatio McCoy, be my Martian wingman—"

"Jim—"

"—to have and to hold—"

Leonard can feel the flush creeping up over the tops of his ears now. At least Jim isn't throwing his nickname around and addressing him as _Bones McCoy_ like it's his goddamn name, but he really didn't need the world to know about _Horatio._ It's a wonder he hasn't burst into flames. " _Jim_."

Jim soldiers on. Loudly. "—from this day forward, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part?"

Leonard can only stare.

Jim flashes him a grin. "Or, ya know, December?"

Leonard's brain seems to reconnect to his mouth. "Jesus, yes already, just get up!" He reaches out a hand to pull Jim to his feet, but Jim springs upright of his own accord. Before Leonard can breathe a word of protest, Jim grabs him by the arm and slides the watch up his wrist, settling it next to his regular Earth watch and snapping the clasp into place. He pulls away, beaming.

The diner bursts into applause.

* * *

 _September_

The Enterprise Rover makes a successful landing, and Jim starts his new job at 2 PM on the last Monday in August. Despite having set the weirdness bar pretty damn high, the following month passes mostly without incident.

They do see a lot less of each other—they literally pass in the night—but Leonard is used to that. It's no weirder than it was during those first three years in San Francisco, Jim getting a late start on undergrad, Leonard working on his residency. There were whole months subsumed by papers and exams and hundred-hour weeks at the hospital. Leonard remembers the last day of their last fall semester, their first actual night off in god knew how long. They were both too exhausted to sleep, much less to go out and celebrate, and wound up eating takeout Thai food, binge-watching old episodes of _Breaking Bad_ on Jim's laptop.

On the last day of September, a Saturday, their sleep schedules miraculously align, and they make brunch. Jim makes cheesy eggs and bacon with an unhealthy amount of butter; Leonard puts on coffee and toast and runs to the CVS on the corner for milk.

"You know what we need?" Jim asks, halfway through a bite of toast and egg.

Leonard's scrolling halfheartedly through a Times article about El Nino, lifting his mug to his mouth. "What?"

"A safeword."

Leonard chokes on his coffee.

"For emergencies!" Jim laughs as Leonard thumps his own chest, coughing and red in the face. "For real-life emergencies. So you don't get all boy-who-cried-wolf on me."

"Or—" Leonard wheezes, "—you could just _stop with the pranks_ , which frankly aren't that funny."

"Aww. But frankly, my dear, you're so prankable," Jim says, gesturing at Leonard with his fork.

Leonard's so focused on not choking to death in his own kitchen that he mutters without thinking, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."

Jim lights up like a kid on Christmas. "Bones! I never thought I'd get to hear you say that!"

Leonard resists the urge to put his head down on the table and go back to sleep.

That afternoon the heat is breaking records, and by a freakish coincidence, _Gone With the Wind_ is on PBS. They wind up spending the entire afternoon inside in their pajamas, Leonard halfheartedly texting, Jim with a pen and notebook, doodling diagrams and equations and occasionally glancing up at the TV, then looking back down and scribbling furiously.

In retrospect, Leonard will think months later, it really should've been a sign.

* * *

 _October_

Two weeks shy of Halloween, Joanna comes to visit.

Leonard shows up at the airport hating LAX and the ninety minutes he spent in traffic getting there, his heart somewhere in the vicinity of his Adam's apple.

It's not like they're _estranged_ —not like Jim and his mom, anyways. He and Joce are in a much better place than they were even just a few years ago, Joce having eased up on the frankly byzantine custody deal she'd rammed through during the divorce. And while there's part of Leonard that's resentful he missed the first few years of Jojo's life, there's another part that takes Joce at her word when she talks about their daughter's terrible twos.

Point being, he and Joanna get their Skype time in. Visits, not so much.

He spends a good twenty minutes getting lost in the crowds of weekend commuters and last-minute travelers, first going to the wrong terminal by mistake, then spending another fifteen minutes walking all the way back to the right one, where a bored-sounding announcer is calling his name over the speakers: _Leonard McCoy, please make your way to the arrivals floor information desk; your party has arrived._

He finds her flanked by her youth escort, a pair of tired-looking flight attendants listening to her talk loudly and animatedly about something he can't hear over the crowd. She catches sight of him, and then there's a blur of brown hair, blue jeans and tiny Monsters' Inc. backpack barreling straight for him, screaming, " _Daddy!"_

At eight she's already well past too big to pick up. He lets her jump and swings her around anyways, all thoughts of traffic and LA crowds gone from his mind.

On the drive back into town, he gets a long, unbroken update on her life: her tumultuous friendship with her buddy Peter, her grumpy bitch of a teacher (Leonard's private assessment; he files it away to share with Joce later), and what's practically an encyclopedia entry on endangered wolves. (This due to Joanna's unwavering conviction to be a National Park Ranger when she grows up. _That's great, darlin',_ Leonard says every time she reminds him, just about every time they talk _. Just remember that'll take gettin' good grades._ To be fair, he'd say that about just about anything. If she told him she wanted to be a professional juggler, he'd wax poetic about calculus and mechanics.)

By the time they're out of traffic again Joanna is _starving, Daddy, we gotta get food, right now!_ and Leonard remembers how cross-country time-differences work. He drives them to the nearest herd of food trucks, conveniently located near the beach. When Joanna shrieks at the sight of the Pacific, Leonard eases up a little bit, knowing now what they'll be doing for the next couple hours.

On the way home they stop for groceries—Leonard lets himself be convinced that Halloween-themed mac n' cheese is a good idea; after all, Joce runs a pretty tight ship—and by the time they're getting off the elevator on the fourteenth floor, it's nearly 4 PM.

Joanna heads in first, digging the keys out of his jacket pocket and racing down the hall, toting her backpack and a half gallon of milk. Leonard follows, balancing grocery bags in both arms and nudging the door open with his foot before it can slip shut behind her.

He sees immediately that something is off—he just can't put his finger on what.

Standing there with the milk dangling from one hand, Joanna puts it together for him: "It's really dark in here."

"Yeah," Leonard agrees, "Jo, can you get the light switch, please?"

Milk sloshes in the carton as Joanna slams it on the table with excessive force, and runs past him into the hall. The lights snap on, but the room is still vaguely dim. It's then that Leonard notices that the living room curtains are drawn, and that there's a fleece blanket rigged up over the balcony doors, tenuously affixed with multicolored thumb tacks.

Pulling it aside reveals aluminum foil.

Leonard frowns.

Every square inch of glass is plastered with it, not a sliver of sunlight to be seen. Their unit must be hell to look at from the adjacent buildings. He checks his bedroom to find, with relief, that his window is uncovered. When he reappears, Joanna is scratching at a corner of the balcony door. "What's with the tinfoil?" she asks.

"I dunno, darlin'. Jim must've put it up."

At the mention of Jim, Joanna lights up, bounding over to the kitchen table where Leonard is unloading lettuce and bell peppers. "Is he getting ready for Halloween?"

"Maybe," Leonard muses absently, extracting a box of oatmeal.

Actually, knowing Jim? Probably.

"Are _you_ getting ready for Halloween?"

"'Course I am."

Joanna regards him skeptically. "What are you gonna be?"

Leonard smiles. "A doctor, of course."

His daughter is not half so amused. " _Da-ad!_ " she complains, flinging her arms and head onto the table and looking up at him. "You can't go as _yourself_ for Halloween!"

"Says who?"

Joanna flounders for a moment, trying to plug the gap in her logic, then rockets to her feet. "Says Jim! Is he home?"

 _Shit_. She's already marching toward the hallway, McCoy determination fixed in her tiny, squared shoulders.

"Wait—darlin'—Jo, not right now," he calls after her. "He's probably sleeping."

Jo turns in front of the laundry closet and frowns at him before wandering back to the kitchen. "But it's daytime," she protests, sitting and propping her hands up on her elbows. "Only babies sleep during the daytime. And old people, maybe."

Leonard stifles a snort behind the open fridge door. "Jim has a weird schedule. He works the night shift."

"Where?"

When he closes the fridge, Joanna has raised an eyebrow, and for a moment she looks uncannily like her mother. Before he can respond, however, a third voice joins them, and Joanna gets her answer straight from the horse's mouth.

"On Mars!" Jim replies from down the hall, emerging in pajamas and bunny slippers.

"Jim!" Joanna exclaims, and charges.

Jim's a good sport, Leonard thinks as Jim catches the blur of flying eight-year-old with all the grace he could be expected to muster. He staggers a little, but then again he's young and spry, so Leonard doesn't really feel that sorry for him.

"Oof. You're getting heavy, kiddo," Jim teases, hauling Joanna into the kitchen. "Must be all those muscles. You're like a girl-shaped Mars rock!"

"Jim, it's rude to lie," Joanna says, matter-of-factly.

Jim's eyes widen in pantomimed surprise. "What do you mean?"

"People can't work on Mars!"

"They _can't?_ "

"There's no air! And you have to go there in a spaceship, and it takes years and years to get there!"

"Well, then who the heck's been paying my overtime?"

"I think Jim works in a _lab_ , Jojo," Leonard says, as Jim puts her down in the kitchen.

" _Oh_." Joanna looks between the two of them. "That makes sense."

Without another word, she bounds down the hall and disappears into the bathroom. Leonard gestures at his Mars watch, raising an eyebrow. "I thought you didn't have to be at work 'til nine."

Jim waves a dismissive hand and moves for the coffee pot. "Don't worry about it, Bones," he yawns.

"How much sleep are you getting?"

Jim shrugs. "No less than usual."

There's a pause while Jim scoops grounds and Leonard reorganizes the fridge shelves to make everything fit.

"So, uh…" Leonard begins, "…what's with the…" Jim turns to look at him and he gestures at the windows.

"Oh," Jim says, scrubbing the back of his neck with one hand, "Sorry about that. The light was screwing with me. With my sense of time, I mean. They do that at work; the lab doesn't have any windows. I can take it down."

"No, it's all right, but…Jim, you do actually _need_ vitamin D."

"I know, I know, I'm not gonna become a cave creature."

"Ok, but just—"

" _It buuuuurnssss ussss! It freezesssss!"_ Jim interrupts, shit-eating grin in full force. "I'm taking supplements, ok?"

"I know, but—"

Jim reaches out and puts a hand on his arm, just a couple inches above the Mars watch, and suddenly it's like all the air has been sucked out of the room.

"Bones, seriously," Jim says, "I'm fine."

They're standing there staring at each other, blue eyes to hazel, and Leonard is vaguely aware that the silence has gone on a lot longer than he'd expect for a typical exchange between a guy and his roommate.

The next thought that floats to the top of his mind comes fresh out of nowhere:

Maybe there's nothing typical about this.

"Ok," he says finally.

Jim lets go of his arm, and turns to pour himself a cup of coffee.

From down the hall comes the sound of running water, and moments later Joanna reemerges, shaking her hands and flinging soapy drops all over the hallway. Only then does Leonard remember how to breathe.

* * *

The rest of the visit passes without a hitch.

Jim's around for an uno game and a couple of meals—dinner on Sunday, breakfast on Tuesday before Leonard drives Joanna back out to the airport—but other than that he's holed up at the JPL, troubleshooting some problem with one of the Enterprise rover's cameras. There are no more unnatural pauses, no more flashes where Leonard finds himself staring into his eyes and not knowing what to say next.

Jesus.

It's not like he's never thought about it. He has _eyes_ , for Chrissake. And although he'd never let Jim hear it, he's watched the kid work a room, witnessed the application of the patented Kirk charm. In another life...well. He's only got the one.

Still. He hasn't thought about it much until now. At least, no more than he's thought about _anybody_ he's spent a lot of time in close quarters with—like Christine and Geoff at work, or his lab partner back in organic chem. And where the hell is it coming from? They've known each other forever; if he was going to develop a goddamn crush, it should've happened years ago.

Maybe, he muses one day in his office, the moment replaying over and over in his head, it's being single and divorced. Maybe it just comes with the territory: he tends to see himself and others through the lens of potential relationships.

Maybe it's just impending middle-age.

* * *

The problem, he thinks, wandering the grocery store one night in search of plain yogurt—and it's so fucking cliché he feels like a character in an overwrought novel that probably ends with one of them jumping out a damn window—is that Jim is _straight._

Mostly, anyways.

Far as Leonard can tell, he's done his share of "experimenting"—hell, they all have; it _is_ California. (Even if for Leonard it started when he was sixteen and just happened to stick.) But dating? To the extent that Jim actually dates? It's only ever been women.

To be fair, if he asked Jim would probably be game, but Leonard isn't out to become a notch in Jim's bedpost. And besides, for people like him, that sort of thing tends to ruin friendships.

Maybe it's all circumstantial: the Mars watch, the tinfoil all over the damn apartment…maybe it's fucking with him just as much as it's fucking with his roommate. Maybe it'll fade once all of this is over.

Then again, he knows himself. He isn't stupid.

* * *

 _November_

On a Friday afternoon a week before Thanksgiving, a group of teenagers driving back from a Homecoming game decide it's a good idea to play Nascar on the freeway. Ironic thing is, they make it all the way to the turnoff before the blue pickup clips the white mom van and spins out into a fucking drainage ditch. The kid in the driver's seat is wearing a seatbelt; his two passengers aren't. One winds up in the morgue. The other, on Leonard's operating table.

When he finally drags himself back into the apartment at 6 AM the next day, wired and drained from having ranted all the way home to some invisible god of teenage stupidity, Jim is standing in the kitchen, eating leftover stir-fry out of a Tupperware.

He glances up in surprise, fork halfway to his mouth. "Hey, I thought you were down the hall." He shoots Leonard a cockeyed grin. "Don't tell me this is a walk of shame; you look like you've been up…" he trails off suddenly, the smile sliding off his face. He puts the Tupperware down on the counter. "Bones? What happened? What's wrong?"

Leonard just shakes his head, toeing off his shoes and heading straight for his room and a change of clothes.

"S'on the news," he mutters.

When he comes back, Jim is standing in the kitchen, staring grim-faced at his phone. He looks up at Leonard's footsteps.

"Jesus Christ," he says, shaking his head. "Bones, I..."

"Wasn't your fault."

"I know, but—"

"Jim, just…" Leonard looks him in the eye. "It's ok. You don't have to say anything."

Jim stares at him for a moment, looking lost. "Ok," he says finally.

Their tiny kitchen falls silent, but for the sound of early morning commute traffic echoing up from the street. A car horn blares somewhere in the distance.

"I don't think I'm gonna go to sleep yet," Leonard says.

He doesn't think he _can_.

Jim nods.

By some unspoken agreement, they gravitate to the couch and turn on the TV. Neither voices a preference for what to watch, and to Leonard it doesn't matter, as long as it isn't local news. They wind up clicking the first thing recommended on Netflix, some sitcom with binge-bait, twenty-minute episodes: overall unremarkable, but distracting enough.

Two hours in, and halfway through a somewhat contrived plotline about wedding dates, Leonard is blinking blearily when he feels a light pressure against his shoulder. Glancing over reveals exactly what he suspects: a shock of blond hair, Jim already drooling on his bicep, having beaten him to sleep.

For a moment he sits there frozen, contemplating the possibility of snaking an arm around Jim's shoulders. The kid isn't exactly a light sleeper—another small mercy during this whole Mars Time jag—but there's always the possibility he'll wake up first, leaving Leonard to do what little explaining he can.

Then again, Jim's the one who put a watch on his wrist in the middle of a crowded diner, so he'd be one to talk.

Fuck it.

He nods off with an armful of Martian.

* * *

Leonard is a light sleeper—which means when Jim shifts awake, it wakes him up too. To his surprise, when he retracts his arm, Jim neither looks at him funny, nor demands an explanation of any kind. Just blinks around the darkened room, then turns his gaze back on Leonard.

"You ok?" he asks.

Leonard stares at him for a moment, before remembering he actually has to respond. "Yeah. I will be. What time is it?"

Jim stands up and stretches for an indeterminate length of time. He looks first at his wrist, then frowns and looks at his phone. "Four. I think I'm gonna go for a walk. Wanna come?"

The idea of walking to the elevator is exhausting. He wants to crawl straight from the living room to his bed and stay there. Better yet, stay on the couch, Jim tucked under his arm.

Leonard shakes his head.

"Ok," Jim says evenly.

"Dinner?" Leonard asks.

"Ah, sorry." A hand at the nape of his neck, an apologetic grimace. "I made plans already, gonna meet with Spock and Uhura. Rain check?"

The names are vaguely familiar: work friends, a…dynamic programming duo. Maybe.

Jim tilts his head to the side. "Or…you could come, if you want."

"No, no—it's ok. No worries, kid. I'll see you around; I can always call Geoff or Christine."

Except he won't. He doesn't want to see anybody from the hospital right now. He knows it, and by the look on Jim's face, Jim probably knows it too.

Jim doesn't call him on it, though. Instead, he asks, "Hey, how long are you in town this week?"

"What do you mean?"

"Aren't you going home for Thanksgiving?"

Leonard blinks. "Yeah, I guess. I'm flying out…" he racks his memory before giving in and pulling out his phone. "…Wednesday night. What about you?"

Jim shrugs.

Leonard frowns. "You're not working, are you?"

Jim shrugs again.

"Don't you get the day off?"

"In theory, yeah, but there's a lot going on."

Leonard opens his mouth to protest, but Jim cuts him off:

"It's not a big deal, Bones. The Martians are doing a thing that morning after we got off work."

"Doesn't seem very fair. Y'all being federally-funded Martians and all that."

That draws a smirk out of Jim. "We've got nice dental benefits. And there's only a week after that anyways, so…"

 _Wait, what?_

"A week?" Leonard repeats.

Jim nods. "Yeah. December 1st makes four months. After that I get to be a normal human again."

Leonard blinks. "Wow."

There's another pause and Jim tilts his head to the side, staring at him. "You sure you're ok?"

"Yeah, m'fine." He stands up, stretches on his way to the bathroom. "Have fun tonight."

In the shower, he tries to brainstorm what kind of booze his mom's family will appreciate at the Thanksgiving table, because bourbon from California will get him laughed out of the house. When that effort fails, he tries to wrap his mind around the idea that Mars Time will be over soon.

Not even two weeks.

It's a good thing. It is. Jim's sleep schedule really hasn't been doing him any favors, and they can finally take down the aluminum foil. He can take off the damn Mars watch. They can go back to passing in the night on a regular, human schedule.

Everything back to normal.

Right.

* * *

 _December_

He gets Jim's text with about eight hours' warning.

 **Jim** : _youre coming to the NASA thing, right?_

 _what NASA thing_

 **Jim** : _didn't I mention it?_

 _telepathy doesn't count_

 **Jim** : _whoops_

 **Jim** : _there's a NASA thing, 8 pm_

 **Jim** : _Mars party, I mean_

 **Jim** : _a celebration of grit and survival_

 **Jim** : _open bar_

 **Jim** : _plus-ones encouraged_

 **Jim** : _cheesy 90s music_

 **Jim** : _possibly a karaoke machine_

 **Jim** : _free food courtesy of the us government_

 **Jim** : _please come?_

 **Jim** : _I can finally prove to you there are people out there weirder than me_

 _kid, you had me at 'open bar'_

* * *

Jim was right—there _are_ people out there weirder than him.

It's been barely a day since Mars Time has ended, but apparently NASA engineers don't need a ton of recovery time. Or, more likely, they're used to running on fumes.

Leonard finds himself in a house in Santa Monica that's nice enough to have an indoor pool, and a driveway that's long and sloping enough that walking up it from the street is a hike. He's face-to-face with Jim's mentor, a man who introduces himself first as Montgomery Scott, then as "Scotty," all while sipping scotch from a plastic cup and regaling him with barely believable tales of a 24-hour taqueria in Long Beach now frequented by the JPL Martians. (None of them, Scotty confides, have ever seen it in the daylight, but it's got "the best carnitas soft taco super you've ever eaten in your life, laddie.")

Scotty wanders away eventually, and just as Leonard is wondering whether he could have been some sort of strange hallucination, he's approached by another man: tall, unsmiling, with an even worse case of vitamin-D deprivation than Jim's, and a jet-black bowl cut straight out of 1962.

"You are Jim's friend Doctor McCoy," the man says without preamble. "Jim has told us much about you. I am Spock."

It takes Leonard half a second longer than usual to react. "Uh…Leonard's fine."

He sticks out a hand, which "Spock" does not shake.

"So…Spock a given name or a family name?" Leonard asks.

Spock hasn't blinked once since he started talking to Leonard, and Leonard tries not to be weirded out by it. "A given name," he replies. "My surname, I have found, is largely unpronounceable to native English speakers."

Well. _That's_ a goddamn challenge if Leonard's ever heard one.

His eyebrow twitches up of its own accord. "Try me."

Spock regards him skeptically for a moment—the tiniest flicker of emotion a human could possibly be capable of making—then opens his mouth to speak.

He says…well. _Something._ To Leonard's ear it's a jumble of sibilant noises. Jim jokes about the JPL crowd being "Martians," but Spock might actually _be_ one.

"Ok," Leonard concedes, "fair enough. So…how do you work with Jim?"

"I am part of the JPL programming division. Jim and I occasionally collaborate." He shifts on his feet, and if that's not an indication of something _there_ , Leonard doesn't know what is. "Jim's methods, I have found, are frequently…" Spock trails off for a moment, "…unorthodox, yet strangely effective."

Leonard has a feeling the word "unorthodox" wasn't the first one that came to mind. He can't imagine the two of them working together. Leonard's already pretty confident that if _he_ was in Jim's shoes, one of them would eventually end up in a shallow grave.

"Well, that sounds like Jim," he says.

At that moment, a graceful, dark-skinned woman in a salmon dress steps her way through the crowd and puts her hand on Spock's shoulder.

"He means their first week on Mars Time they just about got into a fistfight in the lab," she says, then extends a hand. "Nyota Uhura."

(Thank god; an actual human.) "Leonard McCoy," he replies, taking Uhura's hand and shaking it warmly.

Spock, for his part, gets a bit of a pinched look on his face. "Nyota, the disagreement had hardly approached the level of physical altercation—"

Uhura laughs. "You two were ready to take it to the parking lot." She pats his arm. "Leonard, Jim's said a lot about you."

Leonard blinks. "Oh?"

He realizes shortly that Uhura's smile is a little bit similar to Jim's. It quickly turns mischievous, and before he has a chance to preempt it, she begins recounting a vaguely embarrassing story from their time in San Francisco involving a broken dryer, a set of acrylic paint, and a spider the size of a small rat.

By the end the tips of his ears are burning, but Uhura's so genuinely amused, telling the tale in such good faith that Leonard can't help but laugh it off too.

"Wow…I'm not really sure how to respond to that," he says eventually. Then, suddenly a little embarrassed, "I wish I could say he'd spilled near as much about you. Our schedules haven't exactly aligned in a few months."

Uhura smiles warmly. "I'm sure we'll be able to see much more of each other now."

From across the room, someone calls her name and Spock's, and Leonard follows her gaze to a dark-haired woman on the other side of the room, wrapped up in a yellow cardigan.

"Excuse me," Uhura says, "Number One wants to see us. Congratulations on surviving Mars Time." She turns and disappears into the crowd.

Spock says nothing, but—like they're in a goddamn Austen novel—inclines his head, barely, and follows her.

With a disbelieving chuckle, Leonard turns and goes in search of Jim, eventually locating him by the bar, waiting on a drink. Never mind that it's December, the kid's wearing a white dress shirt and a pair of offensively neon, hibiscus-print board shorts.

Leonard sidles up to the bar and shoots Jim an appraising look. "The hell are you wearin'?"

Jim raises an eyebrow, and Leonard can tell he's biting back a grin. "Festive garb for a festive occasion."

"I hear you've been tellin' stories about me."

Jim shrugs. "Gets chatty in the lab. Everybody does it. Sulu talks about his partner, Ben, Chekov talks about his…well. It changes week to week. I've had a hell of a time trying to get Spock and Uhura to talk about each other." He drops his voice to a stage-whisper and leans in a fraction. "I think he was her TA."

Leonard blinks, glances back across the room to where Spock and Uhura are chatting with Number One. _That's_ another thing he's gonna have a hard time reconciling. No wonder Spock looked so damn pissy.

Then he runs through what Jim just told him and frowns. "Nobody bitches about their parents? Family shit?"

Jim's smile turns coy.

Before Leonard can press for more of an answer, the bartender passes Jim's drink across the bar, and then Jim's pulling him into the crowd.

"C'mon. You haven't met everybody yet."

* * *

He meets the aforementioned Sulu, who immediately gives him a tiny cactus plant with the word _Schiaparelli_ scrawled on the side in black magic marker, and then Chekov, who doesn't look old enough to drive, let alone program space rovers for NASA. Somewhere between his third beer and his first scotch, things start to loosen up. At some point, a karaoke machine is indeed brought out, and while no amount of booze is going to get him up onstage, Leonard takes no small amount of pleasure in watching Jim and Scotty stumble through a magnificently overdone "Bohemian Rhapsody." After that comes Uhura, who proves as elegant a singer as she is a talker, knocking everybody's socks off with "Over the Rainbow." The other numbers blur together, but the night comes to a resounding finish with everybody (Leonard included, at least for the chorus) belting out "Piano Man" at the top of their lungs.

When people finally start to bow out around 2 AM, he finds himself at the end of the fancy driveway, fumbling with his phone to hail an uber while Jim—who isn't much drunker, but is a helluva lot more obvious about it—leans on his shoulder and chuckles.

When the car shows up, they pile messily into the backseat.

The driver, a middle-aged woman with flyaway blonde hair, shoots them a look in the rearview mirror that's equal parts amusement and skepticism. It's a little like they're teenagers caught out late where they shouldn't be and she's somebody else's mom, agreeing not to rat them out if they head on home. "Seatbelts, gentlemen," she says dryly.

She starts driving without checking to make sure they've buckled in. Leonard searches for his while Jim flails nearby doing the same, and then suddenly Jim's elbow looms in Leonard's peripheral vision, and there's a firework of pain directly across the bridge of his nose.

" _Shit_." He presses his hands to his face, starting to breathe through his mouth. It doesn't feel broken, but the kid's got _bony_ goddamn joints…

"Oh crap—sorry, Bones—is it bleeding? Lemme see."

"No, Jim, it's fine, I don't think—"

Jim, all octopus limbs and prying fingers, can't help but let out a giggle: "Gonna have napkins hangin' outta your nose…"

Leonard snorts, which is now only a little painful. This allows Jim the distraction he needs to tug Leonard's hands away, and to poke his fingers into Leonard's cheek, examining. "Huh," he muses. "Not bad."

Leonard rolls his eyes. "Asshole." He grabs onto Jim's hand to pull it away…

…and doesn't let go.

It's like they're standing in front of the fridge back in October, staring at each other like they're waiting for something to happen.

Except then Jim giggles softly, and leans in.

The driver's gonna say something, Leonard thinks absently. Any minute now, there's going to be some quip about PDA.

It never comes.

* * *

He wakes up before he opens his eyes and sees red on the inside of his eyelids, blood vessels and tiny arteries. Wisely, he keeps them shut for the moment and takes stock of himself instead, cataloguing his hangover. He's a little stuffy, a little dehydrated. Not terrible, all things considered.

He shifts slightly—then realizes there's a comfortable weight settled along the right side of his body. He moves his fingertips, to find a familiar soft, dry texture under his right hand.

 _Oh._

He opens his eyes.

Looking down the length of the bed he can see Jim has thrown an arm over his waist, his fingers curled lightly against Leonard's ribs. He's wearing a gray, NASA tee-shirt—not one he was wearing last night. Over Jim's shoulder, there's a little button on the end table that says, "I survived Mars Time." A pair of them, actually, and a memory flashes though Leonard's mind, of someone pinning one to his shirt at the party.

He takes in a deep breath, oxygen flowing to his brain, awakening fuzzy memories of the night before.

Apparently, Jim can sense the change because it wakes him up too.

The pressure of his arm shifts as he pushes himself onto his side and looks sleepily up at Leonard, but doesn't pull away.

"Hi," he says.

"Hi," Leonard answers, and his voice comes out pre-coffee: hoarse and unused.

Jim glances down the length of the bed, then back up, taking it all in.

"Did we, uh…" he asks, letting the obvious trail off the end of his sentence.

Leonard lifts the sheet and sees the same dark-wash jeans and half-unbuttoned dress shirt he was wearing the night before. Jim too—he may have swapped out his shirt sometime in the night, but there are the same obnoxiously floral Hawaiian shorts, that have _no place_ in Leonard's bed.

Well. _That_ thought provokes a few others. It's a good thing they aren't spooning.

Leonard lowers the sheet. "I don't think so."

"That's probably a good thing," Jim says eventually. "I was pretty out of it…"

"Me too," Leonard nods.

They fall silent again.

The question sits on the tip of Leonard's tongue for a long time before he's able to push himself to ask it. For fuck's sake, they're literally _cuddling in his bed_ ; if he isn't able to by now, he won't ever be.

"Jim," he says slowly, "have we been dating?"

Jim blinks a pair of cautious blue eyes at him. "…How do you want me to answer that?"

Leonard raises an eyebrow. " _Truthfully_."

"Ok." Jim sits up. "You are really fucking oblivious."

Leonard blinks. "Beg pardon?"

"You realize there's an app for the Enterprise Rover. Right?"

"What does that have to do with—"

" _Bones._ I gave you a watch. In front of about fifty people!"

Leonard splutters. "But—I thought—I thought that was just to mess with me!"

Jim stares at him.

"You went all Shakespearean!"

"Bones _…_ " Jim shakes his head. "I've liked you since…" he pauses. "...truthfully, probably since we first met. But consciously? Since we moved to LA."

Leonard is dumbstruck. "But I thought…"

"What?"

The next sentence sounds absurd coming out of his mouth, but he says it anyways because it's _true_. "I thought you were straight."

Jim's eyes widen. "...In what _universe?_ "

"What do you mean? Since when do you date men?"

"Since wh— _Bones._ " Jim's arms are crossed now; he's sitting cross-legged in those shorts that are downright _offensive_ , and good god, an inconvenient boner is the last thing Leonard needs right now. "Did you forget how we started rooming together in the first place?" Jim demands.

"Of course not! Your roommate—"

"Gary."

"—was an asshole and kicked you out with no warning, and you wound up in shitty overflow housing, and…" Leonard trails off as the missing piece _clicks_ into place and it all comes together. "… _Oh_."

"Yes, _oh_." Jim rolls his eyes. "D'you remember Neil McKenna?"

Leonard scours his recollections. "The pilot guy I went out with?" In his memory, McKenna is ginger-haired and self-absorbed, but there's not much else. Maybe he's blocking it.

"Yeah. I would've warned you off that one."

"When did you—"

"'Bout a week after we moved into overflow housing," Jim says dryly, "Although I'm not surprised you never found out. This was back when you still thought I was a 'pandering infant narcissist who doesn't understand the concept of laundry.'"

Leonard doesn't respond, but flushes to think of how much of disaster he'd been when he and Jim first met.

"And then there was the whole thing with Spock…" Jim adds offhandedly, and Leonard's eyebrows shoot up so fast it triggers a mild headache.

Jim giggles. "Just kidding."

There's a pause, and for a long moment they just look at each other. Jim leans forward, closing the space between them, pressing a chaste kiss to Leonard's mouth. "Bones, I really, really like you."

Leonard feels heart leap into his throat. "I like you too."

Jim grins and kisses him again. This time it's somewhat less chaste.

" _Great balls of fire_ ," the man eventually murmurs against Leonard's cheek.

Yeah. Great balls of fire.

"Mm-hmm," Leonard murmurs back. Then: "…wait, what?"

Jim laughs softly. "It's our safeword, remember? So you know I'm not messing around."

Leonard stares at him.

"What?"

Leonard tries. He really, really tries. The snort comes up anyways, and Jim makes a noise that reminds Leonard of an indignant parrot.

"Sorry, sorry, it's just…" Leonard trails off. Jim's smile is in his eyes, those goddamn eyes, and nobody should be able to sound that sincere with the phrase _great balls of fire_ coming out of their mouth _._ "…it's kind of long," he finishes, lamely.

The corners of Jim's mouth tug upward in a familiar shit-eating grin. He clears his throat, theatrically. "Bones McCoy—"

Leonard puts a hand over his face. "Dammit, Jim."

"—will you be my Earthling lover, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better or worse, in Mars Time or Earth Time, in sickness and in health, 'till death or unavoidable life circumstances do us part?"

Leonard lets out a groan, then leans forward and kisses Jim to get him to shut up.

"Jesus Christ. Yes already."

* * *

 **A/N:** Everything I know about Mars Time comes from a TED talk by an actual NASA engineer, Nagin Cox. Her talk, which is delightful and from which I've pilfered my title, is called "What time is it on Mars?" (I confess, the bit about NASA employee dental benefits is largely speculation.)

Alternative phrases for Jim and Bones's safeword: "fiddle de dee," "I do declare," "pantalets," "varmint," "jehosephat," and "good heavens, woman, this is a war, not a garden party."


End file.
